Field and river

20th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (ICES20)
Mekelle University, Ethiopia

"Regional and Global Ethiopia - Interconnections and Identities"
1-5 October, 2018

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D'ANVILLE AND THE CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE BLUE NILE'S SOURCES [Abstract ID: 0514-13]

Junia FURTADO, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

The French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697–1782) in his Carte de l’Afrique and Carte de l'Ethiopie orientale, published in 1727, was the first to cartographically represent the source of the Nile situated in the high mountains of Ethiopia which was in fact the Blue Nile according to the Portuguese Jesuit sources that he used. Father Péro Paez, a Jesuit priest who traveled to Abyssinia in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, was the first to see and describe the source of what was considered to be the Nile. Paez's information was incorporated into the manuscript that, between 1628 and 1644, Father Manuel de Almeida wrote describing the Jesuit actions in the region, as well as in the accounts of father Jerome Lobo, who preached in Abyssinia between 1624 and 1634, and also personally visited the Nile source located in the Dambea lake, in the Abyssinian mountains. This paper will compare the Jesuits written sources with D’Anville’s maps concerning the representation of the Nile source.